No one's addressing, refuting, or challenging your qualifications. My point was to post Mr. Stipe's comments about the River and about the renewal. The original post I wrote was to supplement what the OP stated, not to add to it.
Let me be perfectly clear on a few things:
1. My two posts:
Not everything that has gone on in "the river" has been of God. This is not to say it's all been of the devil. But I would challenge the supporters of the River and of the like movements to listen to the fact that so many people are saying similar kinds of things against some of the practices.
Their voices deserve to be heard.
No comment there about the Vineyard, yet you are drawing this back to the Vineyard. What have I said of the Vineyard?
Then, my other comment:
RP:
I don't believe we should be shaking in our boots. I know that God is bigger than any thing we face. I just feel very deeply that what is being said against the manifestations deserves some sincere attention. The contrary words are not coming from fringe dwellers, but from people who have truly been in very deep and very far.
I know that a lot of good is in the River. But I also know that there's some unhealthiness in there, too. It is very hard for people who are in it to see it until they get their eyes and ears opened.
Perhaps change from within is what is needed, not a disbanding of the movement.
2. I'm stating NOTHING about Mr. Stipe holding my opinion. This has to do with my stating of his experience, not of my opinion.
3. What I know of the Vineyard, and what I have seen, which I do not care to catalog [except to say that it's had a profoundly negative influence in my life], has nothing whatever to do with this topic. The topic is not the Vineyard; it is, rather, "The River", and the various and combined experiences inside that setting.
4. It's so easy for you to dismiss what he has told of his experiences because of your characterization of him as having a wounded spirit. This conveniently absolves you of having to open your eyes and unstop your ears to face the truth of the words that he has written. In one sentence, you so easily and lightly dismiss
his vast array of experience and "insider knowledge" from his position of pastor and from serving on the board of directors of the Association of Vineyard Churches (AVC), yet in the next, with a quickness you advertise your 15 years of experience and expect to be taken as serious based upon YOUR merits.
Either both his and your sets of knowledge and experience are of merit, or neither is of merit.
It is not one, separate from another. If you would so readily boast of your own 15 years in the capacities wherein you have served, surely you must have an open ear and heart to glean from HIS, must you not? And based on your experience, is it beneficial for you to overlook his?
The issue at hand is with a larger movement, rather than a smaller denomination. The truth of what is ringing aloud here from the disenfranchised and disillusioned can no longer be ignored. God is blowing trumpets in Zion to awaken His people out of slumber. He is using the Paul Gowdys, the Tom Stipes, and many other hearts who will cry aloud and who will spare not.
There will be those who will hear the call, and not dismiss it as "the uncertain sound", but who will arise and acknowledge that change is coming, change must come, change has already come and now is.
He will send the refiner's fire to perfect and purify. In that perfection and purification, there will be some exposing. When the refiner's fire exposes that impurity which floats to the surface, it is not for the sake of drawing attention to the dross, but for the sake of the refiner to draw it out and away from gold tried in the fire. So it will be with the refining of this movement. God will purify and perfect, and dross will be exposed. It is not for the exposing, but for the eliminating. But in the eliminating, exposure will come and must come for that dross to be seen, and therefore extracted out so that only the gold tried in the fire may remain.
It is time for people to stop focusing so much on what this church is doing, and on what is going on in THAT denomination, and to turn their eyes heavenward, and see what HE is doing, and apply it where it fits.
I Corinthians 3:10-13
According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. edit
11: For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. edit
12: Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble;
13: Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.
QC
do you know Mr. Stipe and those who attest with him, or because he holds your opinion he has to be right ? Have you ever been to Toronto , or were you there at Kansas City for the prophetic movement.
I think 15 years in the Vineyard , under 2 different regional overseers ( a youth pastor for one for a 4 years), quilifies for me to give a different inside perspective.
That wasn't the norm for Vineyard church's.
How does this guy's perspective from the KC prophetic have anything to do with the Toronto blessing is beyond me.He sounds like he's writting from a wounded spirit , I pray God heals and restores him.That was just one mans experience inside one church..that doesn't discredit everyone/everthing envolved.
..........................In Christ , Shawners
..Thats what I thought QC
